Weighty questions for Edwin Rodriguez

Monday

Nov 18, 2013 at 6:00 AMNov 18, 2013 at 12:25 PM

There are plenty of questions about Edwin "La Bomba" Rodriguez and his boxing future today after the Worcester fighter's embarrassing weekend in Ontario, Calif. One question was answered even before his one-sided 12-round loss to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward on Saturday night. And that is, does Rodriguez have a future at 168 pounds?

Bud Barth TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

There are plenty of questions about Edwin "La Bomba" Rodriguez and his boxing future today after the Worcester fighter's embarrassing weekend in Ontario, Calif.

One question was answered even before his one-sided 12-round loss to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward on Saturday night. And that is, does Rodriguez have a future at 168 pounds?

The answer, clearly, is no. The lanky, 6-foot Dominican native couldn't make the weight limit on Friday, coming in 2 pounds heavy. That's a lot at a weigh-in unless your name is Ricardo Mayorga, who reported 8 pounds over the 147-pound limit for his aborted 2004 bout with then-WBA welterweight champion Jose Antonio Rivera of Worcester.

If the rotund Mayorga had climbed into the ring and been cut, he would have bled gravy. Clearly, he was trying to avoid fighting Rivera, and it worked.

That was probably not the case with Rodriguez against Ward, even though HBO announcers Max Kellerman and Roy Jones Jr. intimated as much during Saturday night's telecast.

While Rodriguez — now 24-1-0 with 16 knockouts — always has played with fire when it came to his weight, walking around at over 200 pounds between fights, his body type might just be incapable of trimming down to 168 pounds and still being strong enough to compete.

As a result, he will have to ply his trade in the light heavyweight division (175 pounds), or maybe even go to the next level, cruiserweight (200 pounds) — at least eventually. He and trainer Ronnie Shields have acknowledged that already.

But that opens up another whole series of questions. Like, whether the 28-year-old has the upper-body strength to punch effectively in that division.

And, given the defensive lapses that reappeared against Ward, would Rodriguez be able to survive repeated blows from powerful light heavyweights like Adonis Stevenson, Bernard Hopkins and Sergey Kovalev?

Those are the questions that need to be answered, but there are others. Like, how did Shields let La Bomba's weight get so out of hand? They were together for two months in Houston before the fight. Wasn't his weight charted?

It also raises the question of whether this whole weigh-in fiasco would have occurred if Rodriguez still had a hands-on manager like Grafton's Larry Army instead of an overloaded absentee manager like Al Haymon.

Promoter Lou DiBella said after Saturday's fight that Rodriguez needs to begin some "personal conditioning work," presumably to keep his weight from ballooning so high between fights.

It was DiBella, incidentally, who said in July after Rodriguez's first-round KO of Denis Grachev in Monaco that his fighter was still two or three fights away from being able to compete with Ward. When the fight was made, though, DiBella crowed that Rodriguez could win. But deep down, he may have known better.

Ultimately, even if Rodriguez had come into the Ward fight in top condition and on weight, would he have had a chance against the guy everyone keeps calling the second-best pound-for-pound fighter in the universe behind Floyd Mayweather Jr.? It's highly doubtful after watching Ward's impeccable work in the ring.

On almost everyone's scorecard, Ward won every round. One of the ringside judges gave Rodriguez two rounds and a second judge gave him one round, which HBO's Jim Lampley called "courtesy rounds."

The only rounds in which Rodriguez wasn't totally outclassed were the first and maybe the second, when the two-time national amateur champion tied up the champ with roughhouse tactics. Ward was only too happy to oblige him, but referee Jack Reiss put an end to the MMA stuff in Round 4 by penalizing both fighters to the brink of disqualification.

Reiss also recommended the fighters be fined, which could cut further into Rodriguez's payday.

He agreed to a $1 million purse, but already forfeited $200,000 for not making weight. Now he could end up with less than $800,000 if the California State Athletic Commission levies fines.

Rodriguez does deserve credit, though. Given his weakened, dehydrated state, he managed to hang in for 12 rounds while eating a steady diet of left hands from Ward, who landed hooks and his so-called "power jabs" — really, straight left-hand leads — at will.

But Rodriguez showed a lack of class after the final bell when he turned his back on Ward rather than give him the obligatory hug. Ward got the final word, though, saying in a post-fight interview that he thought his opponent "was trying to hit the lottery and get lucky" by dragging the fight into the gutter and hoping to land a lucky KO punch.

Ward was a class of fighter whom Rodriguez had not seen in his 24 professional victories. La Bomba was steered away from major world-class competition intentionally by Army, who never pursued feelers to fight Stevenson — then a higher-ranked super middleweight — or Gennady Golovkin, who soon could challenge Mayweather and Ward as the pound-for-pound king.

Army thought Rodriguez's defense was too weak to risk putting him there with a highly skilled ring tactician, which Ward certainly was.

There's no dishonor in losing a lopsided decision to Ward. He beat Arthur Abraham, Sakio Bika and Mikkel Kessler — all former or current world champions — by similar margins.

It's not the end of the road for Rodriguez. But it is a detour.

Contact Bud Barth at bud.b50@gmail.com.

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